The Provenance of John Milton's Christian Doctrine: A Reply to William B. Hunter

3. Love and its Absences in Late Latin and Greek Poetry

“…He does not lack emotion when describing her loss, even claiming that he went back into the battle zone trying to find her, crying out her name as he "rushed furiously and endlessly from house to house through the city". 116 However, the telling detail is that during the initial escape, he never gave her any thought, and only realized that his wife was missing after he had brought father and son to safety.…”

“…[…] Provencal love songs [have] less to do with eroticism, passion, or desire than with class conflict between the disenfranchised squirine and the established nobility (Köhler 1970). 116 One has to marvel at the lengths to which scholars will go to rewrite poetry in order to "consistently read love songs as about anything but love". 117 And as one follows Burns' explanation a little further, the idea at work becomes clear-what is aimed at is nothing less than the dissolving of the text in the solvent of criticism: "The courtly lady dissolves further in Lacanian analyses of lyric and romance where she It is important to note, however, that for Köhler, this is not necessarily true of the troubadours who write in the "trobar leu" or open style.…”

“…[…] vilains est fel et sanz pitié sanz servise et sanz amitié. 116 I curse and excommunicate all those who love wickedness. […] A wicked man is cruel and without pity; without service and without friendship.…”

“…Passionate love is viewed negatively by many of the characters in this section of the Roman. Religious language becomes steadily more prominent toward the end of Guillaume de Lorris' portion, but in the 116 Ibid., ll. 2073e-f, i-j.…”

“…115 At times, however, Wyatt will depart from his Petrarchan model in serious and purposeful ways: "Wyatt was writing from within a culture in which erotic love was not a celebrated subject of contemplation", and that fact "needs to be fully accounted for when we consider the changes he made to Petrarch's poems". 116 One of the most striking differences is the attitude taken toward the woman in the works: Whereas Petrarch famously idealizes Laura's virtues in a manner comparable to Dante's depiction of the heavenly Beatrice in La Vita Nuova, Wyatt is reluctant to praise his mistress, either physically or spiritually. There are almost no descriptions of Wyatt's mistress in any of his poems-no blazons or paeans to her beauty-and she is certainly not treated as a flawless angelic creature.…”